On a clear moonlit night I sometimes call Mama and ask her to look out
of the window. 'Let's Share The Moon', I tell her. We are both living at
different ends of our majestic European continent; Mama, down south next to the
coast of Africa in warm and sunny Tenerife, and myself tucked away up north by
the Arctic Circle in beautiful and cold Finland. Yet, with a bit of luck, as we
speak over the phone, we can each look out of our respective windows and
contemplate the same heavenly body suspended high in the sky above the two of
us. Sharing The Moon feels warm and reassuring. Suddenly we are not so far away
from one another
My earliest childhood memory takes me back to
the island of Tenerife where I was born: We are moving towards the end of the 1960's,
and in a far-away place called America, Lyndon B. Johnson has already served
over half of his term as 36th President of the Unites States of America. I am
just a small child, yet I have already lived through two US Presidents, for I
am exactly eight weeks old when John F. Kennedy, 35th President of The United
States of America is assassinated. Before the decade is over Neil Armstrong and
the crew of Apollo 11 will historically land their lunar craft on the surface
of the moon. On my little Island these events will pass largely unnoticed. For
the grown-ups in my world, life centres around the daily toil in the tomato
fields and banana plantations. Any precious free time is dedicated to family.
Today is such a day.
There's a black volcanic sand beach near our village and I am there
playing with my cousins. The beach is called Playa de la Arena and a multitude
of grown-ups and children are swarming all around. We all belong to the Sanz
family. There's me, there's Mama, there's Papa, there's aunts, there's uncles
and finally there are many Sanz Cousins and I am one of them. I walk over to
the water's edge and lodge a large Coca-Cola bottle in between some stones in a
rock pool. This will cool it down and after swimming in the blue Atlantic
waters we will drink it with our picnic food. Adults and children are all
jumbled up so it’s hard to recognize which child is with which parent. The sun
is shining, the waves are crashing onto the black sand and life is good.
Wherever I am in the world nowadays, I just close my eyes and in an instant I
am transported back to the beach, to the roar of the ocean and to the immense
power of the sun, and it's a safe and warm feeling.
It's Sunday and Papa is showing me where he
works. It's a gigantic building site and I am running up and down a rectangular
hole which somebody has dug in the ground. But I cannot work out why. Papa
tells me it's a swimming pool belonging to the nearby hotel which is also being
built. I am barefoot and the warm concrete feels nice on the soles of my feet.
I love the way the hole slowly deepens and I run from one end to the other as
fast as my little legs will carry me. ‘One day,’ Papa tells me, ’this will be a
huge tourist resort called 'Playa de Las Americas.' I cannot imagine this because
all I see around me are similar buildings all with similarly big rectangular
holes in the ground. Many years have passed since that day but whenever I drive
past the sprawling Las Americas Tourist resort on my return to Tenerife, that
distant memory is reactivated and I am once again that little girl running up
and down an empty swimming pool.
On an ordinary day like any other, Mama tells
me that soon I will become a big sister and that the stork will bring our
family a new baby. I have no idea what Mama is talking about and I forget all
about her words until, one day Grandma Filomena, Mama's Mama, tells me to run
up to the sotea, the roof balcony. The baby is due any minute and with a
bit of luck I will see the stork bringing its delivery. But I am out of luck, I
wait and I wait and I wait, but there is no sign of any stork let alone a baby.
What seems like hours elapse, and my neck is hurting from staring upwards as I
scour the sky for storks. Now I'm beginning to get thirsty. Finally, I hear the
crying of a baby coming from downstairs so I rush down towards the source of
the noise to see the cause of all the commotion.
I can’t go into the bedroom where Mama is,
Grandma Filomena tells me. I know Mama is in there with a baby with Grandma
and with a lot of other women, and I can hear the baby crying but I don’t
understand why I can’t go in. Unbeknown to me, hours have elapsed since the
birth but the placenta has still not been expelled. Everyone including Grandma
is frantic with worry and the women have no idea what to do; If the placenta is
not expelled soon and intact Mama will die. Grandma has an idea. She makes Mama
blow as hard as possible into an empty Coca-Cola bottle and finally, to
everyone’s immense relief, this squidgy, slimy thing that everybody has been
terrified of, slides out of Mama. After a while tranquillity returns to the
room.
The bedroom door is now ajar and from the
doorway I see Mama lying on her bed cradling a baby in her arms. How did that
get there? How can I have missed the stork? The sneak must have flow in through
the bedroom window as I scoured the skies, I crossly think to myself. There are
a lot of women fussing around Mama and the new baby. I recognize my
grandmother, Abuela Filomena and my aunt, Tia Feliza. The others
are unknown. ‘And what a lovely little girl!’ They gushingly tell Mama, 'Look
at that shock of hair,' and everybody seems to have forgotten all about me.
Except for Mama. She sees me standing forlornly at the door and calls me
towards her saying that I can get into bed with her. So I do just that. I tuck
myself in next to Mama, and now everybody that files past the bed to admire the
baby also has a few words for me. ‘Oh, what a charming young baby, and what a
pretty older sister you are, Mari-Carmen!' And I am beaming with happiness
because Mama is including me in the centre of her admiration moment. My new
baby sister is called Rosa-Delia. She is tiny and covered with a fine
layer of little black hairs which will all disappear with time, Mama tells me.
I tell Mama she looks like a monkey. Grandma says it's because she arrived
prematurely. I am now five years old and officially a big sister.
I'm starting school now and Mama sends me off
every morning with a kiss and a wave at the front door. It's only at the end of
the lane so I walk on my own. Girls and boys each have their own classrooms and
each morning we must form two separate lines outside the school entrance. One
line is for the boys and the other is for the girls. I somehow never make it to
the front of the line and I want that more than anything but one day I am
unexpectedly granted my wish. My great-grandmother, Celia dies during the night
and when I go to school the next day to take my place at the end of the girls'
line as I usually do, one of the girls who always makes it to the front comes
up to me. She solemnly offers her condolences for my enormous loss and tells me
that I can take first place in the line in lieu of my sorrow. I am ecstatic,
like any six-year old would be and think to myself, 'I wish a grandmother would
die every night!'
The sixties give way to the seventies and my school days at the end of the lane soon finish because the following Spring I am sat on a plane travelling to England. I am six years old and on this journey with me is Mama and my baby sister who is not yet two. I call her Sis. Our little group is leaving Spain to join Papa somewhere in England. He is already there working on a chicken farm and it has been over a year since we last saw him. We are one of many Spanish families that have left their homes in search of a new life abroad and most of us are poor. As we board the plane, I am blissfully unaware that my life is about to change forever. None of us speak a word of English, and behind us we leave everything that is familiar and reassuring. As the plane takes off and climbs high into the sky, I see the mountains and blue Atlantic sea slowly disappearing out of view. My beautiful Island home has vanished.
I have never been on a plane before and am dead excited. We fly from Tenerife to Paris and from there we take a plane to London, and soon we are about to land. As we approach the airport I look out of the window to glimpse what new adventure lies ahead of me. I have never seen such shades of green. Patchworks of emerald-coloured fields stretch out before me as far as the eye can see. But I already miss my mountains, I miss the roar of the ocean, but most of all I miss my beach. England and the English are all one big mystery to me. How do they live? What do they eat? How do they communicate? I am about to find out.
To be continued......
Next post 9th September, 2018 : Watching The English Part I And II
Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some small additions from private family archives.
